Research On Assurance Mechanism Of Performance Audit For Chinese Government

When citizens, as taxpayers, under legal obligations pay the tax to the state with one hand, they are granted with the right to oversee the use of their money with another hand. The hand for supervision is termed as state audit. Not only do taxpayers have the right to learn where their money goes, but to know how effectively the government uses it. This therefore indicates that the state audit should not only focus on financial status of the government, but also the performance of the government by spending collected taxes. Emerging in mid-1940s and having developed for decades, the significance and depth of application of performance audit in a certain country or area has become an important sign that measures development level and robustness of auditing in this country or area. National Audit Office of China in 2008 promulgated 2008-2012 Work and Development Plan for National Audit Office of China which stated "all auditing projects should involve performance audit by 2012". At present, both theoretical advance and practice for China’s performance are only at the initial stage, and performance audit has not yet been really carried out in this country.In view of this, I choose institutionalization of government performance audit as subject of my research for the dissertation of a master’s degree, aiming at a study and discussion on performance audit for Chinese government in perspective for both theories and practice within my capability and actively promote the development of audit work of the country. The main body of the paper includes 4 sections:Part 1 is to introduce the background of research, significance; Part 2 is to analyze some major factors that restrict the overall development of performance audit in China, which mainly include restriction of system and institution, legislation, personnel and implementation; Part 3 is to analyze successful cases of state performance audit and summarize revelation from good practice; Part 4 is to propose the establishment of assurance mechanism for government performance audit in China, which are assurance of institutionalization that indicates transmission to legislative mode of auditing; assurance of legal system that indicates perfection of legal requirement and making of laws, establishment and development of rating and evaluation system for performance audit, enhancement of accountability system for audit and announcement system in audit; assurance of professional competency of personnel and human resource management polices that incorporates improvement of knowledge structure of auditors, increasing training opportunities and releasing new personnel management policies.Possible contributions of the paper are:1. By analyzing pros and cons of various auditing systems and our national conditions, the paper is to propose that to reform current auditing system gradually and realize legislative mode of auditing whereby the independence of audit is assured.2. On account of real conditions of Yunnan province, the paper is to propose that to integrate human resource for auditing and enhancement of effective coordination of state audit, internal audit and social audit in performance audit.